Catching up with the CCAC and ANA

After taking some time off from blogging following the announcement of the new $100 federal reserve note, there have been a number of news items I wanted to mention that will talk about in more details over the next few days. But I wanted to mention a few as a “preview” of things to come.

Dave Harper wrote on his blog about Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee member Donald Scarinci was tweeting from the CCAC meeting at the Philadelphia Mint this past week. You can read the tweet on his account @Scarinci. As a proponent of using technology to reach out to everyone, I was very happy to go back and read Scarinci’s tweets from the meeting and hope he continues and others follow. I will write more about this topic soon with quotes from Scarinci.

The American Numismatic Association has change how they are assigning convention sites and has decided to add a convention in the Fall. I was a bit confused by the announcement after reading the the World’s Fair of Money will be centered in Chicago and the National Money Show will be part of a rotating series of cities. This is clearly a nod to finding what has been described as “the best bourse cities” which benefits the dealers more than the collectors. Interesting, in the May 2010 edition of The Numismatist, President Cliff Mishler quoted ANA Governor Jeff Garrett that Mishler told him, “He reminded me that there are not two classes of ANA membership—dealers and collectors—but rather a single community, one that cares about the well-being of the hobby.” It is interesting how Mishler could tell an ANA governor that the ANA is a community yet support a convention policy that is clearly geared to the dealer community.

In the April 2010 edition of The Numismatist, Q. David Bowers writes about the aging of the ANA membership noting that 47-percent of its membership is between the ages of 50 and 60. While Bowers notes that there “are several reasons why numismatics has lost its appeal to younger people,” he claims that it is nothing “the ANA has done or not done.” Bowers sites studies that show that younger people have embraced technology and social media to fill their spare time. With all due respect to Mr. Bowers, then why has the ANA not embraced this new social media paradigm? Why isn’t the ANA trying to fit in that electronic social networking space? The ANA has no social media presence or outreach program to these users with the exception of a website and Facebook page and not real electronics communication policy. By the way, did you know the ANA was on Facebook? It is not even advertised on the front page or the ANA’s website!

Finally, your intrepid blogger was recently interviewed for a national publication that will be printed in the late summer. I will write more when it gets closer to the publication date.